What makes the AR-15 style rifle the weapon of choice for mass shooters?

The mass shooting this past April at a California synagogue has something in common with the deadliest massacres: the AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. Variations of the AR-15 were used to kill at two New Zealand mosques, a Pittsburgh synagogue, Texas church, a Las Vegas concert, Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida and Sandy Hook Elementary School. The AR-15 style rifle is the most popular rifle in America. There are well over 11 million and they are rarely used in crime. Handguns kill far more people. But as we first reported last November, the AR-15 is the choice of our worst mass murderers. AR-15 ammunition travels three times the speed of sound. And tonight we're going to slow that down, so you can see why the AR-15's high velocity ammo is the fear of every American emergency room.

Mass shootings were once so shocking they were impossible to forget. Now they've become so frequent it's hard to remember them all. Last October, in a Pittsburgh Synagogue, 11 were killed, six wounded.

Cynthia Bir: It's exploded and it's tumbling. So what happens is, this particular round is designed to tumble and break apart.

OMG...so much misinformation in such a small space....

Imagine what they'll think when they discover the .308... Doesn't just "shatter concrete" it blows the Earth off axis with each trigger burst.

The deity of your choice help us when someone touches off a .50BMG rifle...

SR

Disregarding the loose facts of this article I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment because there's something that has been bugging me about how easily we shrug off this kind of thing when it's sensationalized or otherwise misrepresented in hysterical media.

Here goes: If you had to shoot a bunch of people quickly and accurately while you're moving around, what firearm/caliber would you pick?


I suspect that ARs would be the clean winner, although not for the reasons that you usually see drummed out in the news.

KlownKannon wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2019 5:52 pm Disregarding the loose facts of this article I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a moment because there's something that has been bugging me about how easily we shrug off this kind of thing when it's sensationalized or otherwise misrepresented in hysterical media.

Here goes: If you had to shoot a bunch of people quickly and accurately while you're moving around, what firearm/caliber would you pick?


I suspect that ARs would be the clean winner, although not for the reasons that you usually see drummed out in the news.

You're correct, of course. This is one reason why an AR pattern is my preferred home defense long arm. What the article fails to mention is why the AR is also safer than many other long arms. The light recoil makes for better aim--when you hit what you aim at, you reduce the risk to others around you. The light bullet makes for less over penetration and is less likely to kill someone on the other side of a wall or adjacent home. The configurable pattern makes for better fitment for various size users, again benefiting the "hit what you aim at" aspect. The ability to easily add an optic/red dot increases hitting what you intend to hit. All of this makes it a better tool for those that need to shoot bad guys for a living or those defending their homestead while minimizing the risk to those on the other side of the wall.

Of course, this also makes it good at shooting large numbers of people, too. Fortunately, murder is already illegal and the vast, vast majority of AR owners are law abiding and would never shoot anybody unless their lives or families' depended on it.

Well, 55 grain M193 ball round does yaw and fracture, creating an explosive-like effect called hydrostatic shock. It is a pretty effective rifle round against humans. The effect can be horrific, so the description is fairly accurate.

someone explain why an AR 15 is more dangerous tha a ruger mini 14 or a springfield SOCOM

Here's one medic's opinion. Use a bigger bullet, 5.56 is weak sauce (as are handgun calibers).
https://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/medic ... hit-shoot/

You will also learn from that article that explosives remain the most effective means of killing large numbers of people. So if we ban the AR, explosives become the new go to for mass killing assholes. Maybe the debate needs to be focused on the nuts rather than the tools...

"mass killing assholes". Depending on syntax, not a bad idea...LOL

SR

senorgrand wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:21 pm someone explain why an AR 15 is more dangerous tha a ruger mini 14 or a springfield SOCOM

I couldn't. Unless you had to use the SOCOM as a club.

KlownKannon wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2019 8:38 pm

senorgrand wrote: Mon Jun 24, 2019 6:21 pm someone explain why an AR 15 is more dangerous tha a ruger mini 14 or a springfield SOCOM

I couldn't. Unless you had to use the SOCOM as a club.

Then the whole thing is bullshit. Here are the three main things that affect wounding:

1) foot pounds released
2) shot placement
3) number of shots

this whole "the ar 15 tumbles rounds" is mythology. Any "expert" who says this needs to be asked:

1) at what rifling rate does this occur?
2) which weight bullets are subjected to this voodoo physics?
3) at what range does this tumbling occur?
4) does barrel length or temperature affect these variable?

If intelligent answers to these questions cannot be provided, said "expert" needs to SHUT THE FUCK UP WHILE GROWNUPS TALK.

/End rant (jk)

Wait, so keyholing is a "feature" now?

I didn't know.

These "experts" all have an agenda, which is to make any semi-autos look bad in the public eye, and brand them as "weapons of war" (which of course, they aren't).

Modern Sporting Rifles are common and the reason that they're used in mass killings, is probably because the overpopularization of mass killings in the media.

There are a lot of sad and broken men out there, and when they read dozens of times that someone got attention by using an AR 15, they listen.

This guy just did so this week:

https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2019/06/17/act ... ng-dallas/

Thankfully, no one else was hurt.

How about: They are light, relatively small, LCMs are readily available, the ammo is common, there are lots of accessories, and many AR-15 patterns can be had cheaply.
And don't forget the adolescent need for something that looks "bad ass" because it LOOKS like the military assault rifles.

Playing devil's advocate, a 9mm carbine with self-defense rounds like my Beretta Cx4 could be even more devastating, other than cost. Lighter, smaller, able to fire massive numbers of rounds rapidly, magazines are much lighter, easy to swap. And they are used by police all over Europe. The Kel-Tec Sub 2000 is even easier to conceal.

And yet the last mass shooting was a guy with a handgun in a government building. I think people use what they have at hand.

Ban them and it's not like they won't continue to be used in shootings. Does someone intent on murdering people really stop and consider how illegal their gun is, stop, and call it off?

Even France has had shooters with fully automatic rifles lately. Ban something and the firepower is likely to get worse not better. Because if semi-auto is just as illegal as full-auto, you may as well pick the latter. Our large, porous, unsecured southern border, makes banning guns all but impossible; just like banning drugs stopped the flow of those, right?

inomaha wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:21 am And yet the last mass shooting was a guy with a handgun in a government building. I think people use what they have at hand.

Ban them and it's not like they won't continue to be used in shootings. Does someone intent on murdering people really stop and consider how illegal their gun is, stop, and call it off?

Even France has had shooters with fully automatic rifles lately. Ban something and the firepower is likely to get worse not better. Because if semi-auto is just as illegal as full-auto, you may as well pick the latter. Our large, porous, unsecured southern border, makes banning guns all but impossible; just like banning drugs stopped the flow of those, right?

There is a limiting factor to that argument, and that's illegal contraband almost always responds to economic forces of supply and demand and increases in price, sometimes astronomically (of course, pharma companies can do it legally! ). In Australia, an AR-15 that can cost $500 to $1000 here runs into 5 figures there--on the order of 35,000 Aus Dollars, roughly $24,000 US.

Of course, when killers like the Charlie Hebdo killers in Paris get their weapons, they are funded and supplied by international terrorist orgs. Also, one can expect organized crime to obtain them as well.

But for the average 1%er nutter, the cost will be prohibitive.

So it works both ways.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:52 am

inomaha wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:21 am And yet the last mass shooting was a guy with a handgun in a government building. I think people use what they have at hand.

Ban them and it's not like they won't continue to be used in shootings. Does someone intent on murdering people really stop and consider how illegal their gun is, stop, and call it off?

Even France has had shooters with fully automatic rifles lately. Ban something and the firepower is likely to get worse not better. Because if semi-auto is just as illegal as full-auto, you may as well pick the latter. Our large, porous, unsecured southern border, makes banning guns all but impossible; just like banning drugs stopped the flow of those, right?

There is a limiting factor to that argument, and that's illegal contraband almost always responds to economic forces of supply and demand and increases in price, sometimes astronomically (of course, pharma companies can do it legally! ). In Australia, an AR-15 that can cost $500 to $1000 here runs into 5 figures there--on the order of 35,000 Aus Dollars, roughly $24,000 US.

Of course, when killers like the Charlie Hebdo killers in Paris get their weapons, they are funded and supplied by international terrorist orgs. Also, one can expect organized crime to obtain them as well.

But for the average 1%er nutter, the cost will be prohibitive.

So it works both ways.

Theft being the great equalizer. Anyone intent on murdering a large number of people would hardly have an ethical dilemma with stealing the means to do so.

Obviously Prohibition and the War on Drugs were huge successes, so lets ban guns.

senorgrand wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 12:24 pm Obviously Prohibition and the War on Drugs were huge successes, so lets ban guns.

Well, they were both amazingly successful at increasing organized crime and gun homicide, so I guess it depends on what the goal is...

One reason is the cheap AK pattern rifle kits and dirt cheap ammo have dried up (or been legislated out). If the availability was like the 90-95 era, or earlier, I think we would see a greater variety of rifles used.

Marketing and availability has much more to do with it than ballistics.

featureless wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 11:08 am

YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:52 am

inomaha wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 10:21 am And yet the last mass shooting was a guy with a handgun in a government building. I think people use what they have at hand.

Ban them and it's not like they won't continue to be used in shootings. Does someone intent on murdering people really stop and consider how illegal their gun is, stop, and call it off?

Even France has had shooters with fully automatic rifles lately. Ban something and the firepower is likely to get worse not better. Because if semi-auto is just as illegal as full-auto, you may as well pick the latter. Our large, porous, unsecured southern border, makes banning guns all but impossible; just like banning drugs stopped the flow of those, right?

There is a limiting factor to that argument, and that's illegal contraband almost always responds to economic forces of supply and demand and increases in price, sometimes astronomically (of course, pharma companies can do it legally! ). In Australia, an AR-15 that can cost $500 to $1000 here runs into 5 figures there--on the order of 35,000 Aus Dollars, roughly $24,000 US.

Of course, when killers like the Charlie Hebdo killers in Paris get their weapons, they are funded and supplied by international terrorist orgs. Also, one can expect organized crime to obtain them as well.

But for the average 1%er nutter, the cost will be prohibitive.

So it works both ways.

Theft being the great equalizer. Anyone intent on murdering a large number of people would hardly have an ethical dilemma with stealing the means to do so.

While the premise seems reasonable I have no idea if it's, in fact, reflective of reality. People's self-image REQUIRES that they can rationalize the evil they do as something else and not actually something else. I can see a fanatical White Supremacist thinking "I have to protect the White race by slaughtering Blacks and Jews, but I'm not going to steal a weapon or the money to buy one because I'm not a thief!"

So people make excuses and draw lines they don't want to cross. OTOH, some like Trump have a 2 binary choice patternss:
1) If I want it, it's mine and anyone who has and keeps it from me is stealing from ME! EVERY penny YOU have is mine by right therefore you stole it from. Any woman I want is MINE by right and even if I force her, it's not rape because IT'S MY RIGHT!
2) Anyone who says anything nasty about me is obviously evil and should be locked up, then executed.

Factually, illicit goods ARE generally much more expensive than if they are legal. Econ 101.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 4:05 pm While the premise seems reasonable I have no idea if it's, in fact, reflective of reality. People's self-image REQUIRES that they can rationalize the evil they do as something else and not actually something else.

I don't either, honestly. And you second point is valid. But drawing on parallels, making something illegal hardly makes it difficult to obtain, especially if it's a common item, which the AR (or opiates) is. And it is somewhat irrelevant since so many alternatives exist if the goal is mass casualties. Recent examples consist of pressure cooker bombs at marathons, rental trucks at markets, machetes on trains, the lowly handgun at work, etc.

All that to say, banning "assault weapons" will not do what we want it to. We already tried it. We need to focus on the why, not the how.

Of course, the other issue is with something like 11 million AR-15 patterns out there, plus all the other semi-autos (like my 2 9mm PCCs) the problem of the Taking becomes a major 5th and 14th Amendment issue as well as a 2A one. I don't know how many total semi-auto rifles are out there, plus there's got to be even more semi-auto handguns than rifles.

And, of course, people ALWAYS find a way and a reason to kill other people. And they have since the mythical Cain invented murder and used it on Abel.

YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:18 pm Of course, the other issue is with something like 11 million AR-15 patterns out there, plus all the other semi-autos (like my 2 9mm PCCs) the problem of the Taking becomes a major 5th and 14th Amendment issue as well as a 2A one. I don't know how many total semi-auto rifles are out there, plus there's got to be even more semi-auto handguns than rifles.

And, of course, people ALWAYS find a way and a reason to kill other people. And they have since the mythical Cain invented murder and used it on Abel.

So if we look at balancing, do we balance the less than 100 deaths per year by AWs on the backs of the 11 million law abiding ones, law abiding ones with a conditional right to them? I hardly see the "common sense" in that regulation. Certainly, there are lower hanging fruits...

(I know you weren't suggesting such, just soap boxin)

featureless wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:29 pm

YankeeTarheel wrote: Tue Jun 25, 2019 8:18 pm Of course, the other issue is with something like 11 million AR-15 patterns out there, plus all the other semi-autos (like my 2 9mm PCCs) the problem of the Taking becomes a major 5th and 14th Amendment issue as well as a 2A one. I don't know how many total semi-auto rifles are out there, plus there's got to be even more semi-auto handguns than rifles.

And, of course, people ALWAYS find a way and a reason to kill other people. And they have since the mythical Cain invented murder and used it on Abel.

So if we look at balancing, do we balance the less than 100 deaths per year by AWs on the backs of the 11 million law abiding ones, law abiding ones with a conditional right to them? I hardly see the "common sense" in that regulation. Certainly, there are lower hanging fruits...

(I know you weren't suggesting such, just soap boxin)

With about 16,000 non-suicide gun deaths every year, "we" (society) sees them as poor, working class, inner city, etc, etc, etc, but not "us".

But when the victims are "nice people like us" even though they are, at most, 300 gun deaths out of 16,000, they become the major source of fear. It's not unique to gun deaths. In the wake of 9/11 anti-terrorism spending to protect people per capita was 5 times as much for Wyomingans, than for New Yorkers, who were the ACTUAL victims of the biggest terrorist attack in our history!
I mean, that's just INSANE, but that's how fear works. It's not logical. I remember a guy I had to work with when a huge deadline was approaching for a deliverable, got hung up on the placement of a period, insisting it was critical when it was trivial to big problem.

What we all know here is that it is not only the wrong solution to the problem, it won't work.